Wharton In The News

Lisa Bolton, assistant professor of marketing, was quoted in a June 6 BusinessWeek article about the marketing of weight management drugs. Her research on the effect of weight management drugs revealed that taking the drugs actually leads people to eat fewer low-fat foods and exercise less—the opposite of the desired behavior

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On June 17 The Economist quotes Peter Cappelli George W. Taylor Professor of Management, about the control employers have on terms of employment and short-term contracts. In New Deal at Work, he wrote, “While employers have quite clearly broken the old deal and its long-term commitments, they do not control the new deal…it is hard to see what could make employees give that control and responsibility back to the employer.” The article also appeared in the New Zealand Herald on June 19.

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In the June 10 Wall Street Journal, Thomas Donaldson, Mark O. Winkelman Professor; Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics, criticized the role connections play for students and internship programs, including a trend toward charity. Companies “have an obligation to hire the best people bidder—so they’ll get the biggest return on their investment,” he said.

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Mauro F. Guillen Dr. Felix Zandman Professor in International Management; Professor of Management and Sociology, was cited in a New York Times article on June 8, about the expansion in Europe through mergers and acquisitions. In his book, The Rise of Spanish Multinationals, he wrote, “Without the skills and managerial personnel of their European counterparts, it is likely that Spanish firms will remain strong in the 10 percent of the world represented by Spain and Latin America, and largely absent from the rest.” Jack Guttentag, an emeritus professor of finance, was profiled in a June 26 Newsweek article about his efforts to help borrowers bypass non-disclosure of costs by mortgage brokers. “Guttentag crusades for transparency,” columnist Jane Bryant Quinn wrote. “He wants providers to disclose the loan’s wholesale price (the interest rate and points), plus the markup, in writing and in advance.”

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On May 12 the Philadelphia Inquirer featured the story of how Wharton Global Consulting Practicum was helping a Peruvian chef export his sauces to the U.S. The MBA consulting project was one of 11 the program conducted this year, including clients from India, Israel, and Peru. Leonard Lodish, Samuel R. Harrell Professor; Professor of Marketing, who founded the program, said that a client from last year, a Colombian brewer, is now marketing one of the fastest-growing imported beers in the U.S. The article also ran in the Miami Herald (6/19/06) and the Kansas City Star (6/12/06).

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On June 20 Dow Jones News interviewed Olivia Mitchell, International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor; Professor of Insurance and Risk Management and Business and Public Policy, for an article about the Pension Benefit Guaranty insurance on private retirement packages. “The PBGC don’t think anybody really expected … there would be entire swathes of American industry that would have

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Witold Rybczynski, Martin & Margy MeyersonProfessor of Urbanism; Professor of Real Estate, was quoted in a Rocky Mountain News editorial on June 1 about the challenges New Orleans is facing in re-establishing itself as a top tourist attraction. He predicted that New Orleans will be rebuilt as a smaller and very different city: “While cities grow very quickly, they decline slowly. … This very cruelly accelerated. Half the low-income people in New Orleans were tenants—a very high number. The landlords can’t afford to rebuild houses for those tenants. If they rebuild, it’s going to have to be for somebody with a lot more money, because rebuilding a house costs more than it’s worth right now. That’s a quandary I don’t see any solution to.”